Crooked Brain｜Mimiana: I saw my place in the overseas Sitong Bridge solidarity movement

This article was first published on Wainao, the original text "Self-reported: In the overseas Sitong Bridge solidarity movement, we overcome fear like this"

After the Sitong Bridge protest in Beijing sparked a massive wave of solidarity overseas, we also joined the school to put up slogans and posters. I asked a friend who was sitting in the office to print more than 30 posters, prepared tape and scissors, and went to her school with another friend who was studying at the University of Manitoba after get off work the next day.

We roamed the various subject buildings, walkways, bus stops and student centres on campus to find the right location. The friend seemed very nervous. She said that she deliberately dressed low-key, wearing a hat and a mask, and chose a long black down jacket to wrap herself around her body, and said to herself several times: "It's more conspicuous."

She looked left and right, restless, and whispered, for fear of being discovered by passers-by. When we were putting up posters on the bulletin board at the entrance of a classroom where we were in class, she urged me to go quickly, because there was a student with an East Asian appearance sitting right in front of us in the classroom. She was worried that the person was Chinese and had already "witnessed" to us. When I suggested going to the business school with the most Chinese students to put up posters, she resisted a little, saying that the Chinese made her very scared.

On the way to the transition I asked her what she was afraid of. Her answer is not surprising - she is afraid of conflict with Chinese "patriotic" students, afraid of being exposed and reported by them, and afraid of affecting her parents, relatives and friends in China.

I have long been aware of the far-reaching threats and surveillance of totalitarianism. It pops up every now and then, reminding you that you cannot escape its grasp. As recently as this summer, I was in a panic all day over the news that I might be "targeted", and was even more frustrated by that panic. It was like I was suddenly pulled back to the state of utter despair that I was in after being harassed by national security in China during the Hong Kong movement in 2019. Nothing changed. I really don't understand, time has passed for so long, and I am already in another free country thousands of miles away, why this fear still hasn't let me go? Why can it still travel through time and space and capture my mind all at once?

I understand that this fear is exaggerated. Totalitarianism relies on people's internalized, spontaneous, and inflated fears to exercise control. Being castrated, disenfranchised, isolated, and constantly self-censoring is the factory setting for the vast majority of Chinese people today. My friend is still very young. He just came out of China after graduating from college. He has never participated in similar activities before, but he only pays attention to issues such as women's rights in the circle of friends. When I asked her if she wanted to go put up posters together, she immediately agreed. "Fantastic!" she said.

I told her a way to manage my fears: "Generally I look at people who are braver and ahead of me, and their experiences help me assess my risks. You can look at me, if There's nothing wrong with me, so you don't have to worry for the time being."

This method sounds a bit immoral. It seems that we use the sacrifice of others to draw a red line of safety for ourselves; in fact, this "red line" is a false delusion, and our happiness for "surviving" contains too many flukes mentality. Moreover, if you focus on avoiding risks, you will constantly discipline yourself to do things and limit the space for action.

However, as a novice who has never participated in politics as a citizen in his home country, just starting to act in a free society is like a person who can't swim jumping into the sea and needs a swimming ring to gain some confidence and control . It is also my responsibility to lower the threshold of political participation for more later generations. After all, I grew up watching the pioneers of feminist activism. Their practice gives me a way to follow, and the gap with them often pushes me to do more. More importantly, their tenacity to persist in action after being suppressed again and again illuminates my invisible fear. In the process we form bonds, stretch the boundaries of each other's capabilities, and are bound together by a moral obligation.

Thank you for redeeming everyone's spirit

"I saw it" - a code phrase that users on Weibo once circulated excitedly. When we saw the resolute resistance of an ordinary person on the Sitong Bridge who made a desperate and martyred life, we also saw our own shame and the shame of this nation waiting to be killed at the juncture of accelerated history. If there is no such person after all, how can we face such shame?

In today's China, where there are thousands of horses, his voice can be called deafening. What he conveys to us is not only the outburst of emotions, the courage to act, the consciousness of self-sacrifice, the high imagination of resistance, and the creation of a mind based on careful planning based on reason. A unique possibility, a surreal beyond reality.

Thank him for redeeming the spirit of all people, so that we do not sink in this.

"A person's bravery should not go without echoes." CitizensdailyCN, a rebel account active on Instagram, appealed immediately after the incident, hitting people's sense of shame. They took the lead in launching slogan sticking activities around the world, advocating all overseas Chinese and international students to print out the slogans and support slogans of Sitong Bridge in the language of the host country and Chinese, and post them in schools and streets.

It is no surprise that Citizen Daily was able to relay and expand operations. This group originally called "Wen Xuan China" on telegram was established after the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, and gradually developed and expanded based on a group of pan-liberal young people who gathered for Li Wenliang's appeal. They draw on the "cultural propaganda" method of the Hong Kong protesters, continue to carry out civic education for young and middle-aged Jane, and promote the concepts of democracy, freedom and progress. They have also kept abreast of current events and organized public discussions. Nearly three years later, on October 12, Li Wenliang's birthday, they finally ushered in another moment of fulfilling their mission.

This mobilization has reached an unprecedented scale. Thousands of posters have swept across more than 300 colleges and universities around the world, attracting the attention of many mainstream overseas media. With the influence of this action, Citizen Daily has greatly expanded its community and established online telegram groups based in London, New York, Toronto, Southern California, and Australia - "My Duty Online Democracy Wall", gathering together The local Chinese who care about the fate of their motherland, oppose dictatorship, and support democracy have arisen.

All overseas Chinese and international students need a safe, democratic and free cyberspace now more than ever. We don't stand on the same campus or on the same street, and we don't know each other's true identities, but that doesn't prevent us from fully exchanging information, supporting each other, breaking atomization, and reconnecting.

- Citizen Daily wrote when introducing "My Duty Online Democracy Wall".

Feelings of fear are so common

Citizen Daily is not the only youth group working on this "connection". In recent years, in contrast to China's expanding nationalism and the "patriotic" international student groups that have spread to Western campuses, many young people with pan-liberal tendencies overseas have also been politicized in public events at home and abroad, and have reached Together. I am the only one involved. The North American Chinese feminist community with New York as the core has been working hard for many years, and they have contributed to the Chinese Rice Rabbit Movement and many feminist public events. During the epidemic, my friends led a community of Chinese students and activists to respond to the dilemmas and opportunities of overseas Chinese youth political participation, and to cultivate new social movement forces. In this slogan labeling activity, they also responded quickly.

When we reviewed the experience of this event together, we found that the feeling of "fear" was so common and similar. In cities far from the progressive atmosphere of California and New York, some students feel isolated on their own campuses, fearing the power of CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars Association), which is rumored to have interests in the Chinese embassy. But even if the "patriotic" students are not organized, a large and aggressive state machine is still the "spirit behind".

At Wageningen University in the Netherlands, an international student named Zhu Zihao is very representative. He recorded a high-profile video of tearing up protest posters, claiming that he had reported it to the school, and the school also actively participated in the investigation and removed all "illegal posters". He even lied that the school leaders believed that this move seriously violated the "values of the University of Vale and the Dutch government" and would impose "serious punishments" on those responsible. Although these threatening words directly copied from the Chinese context to Western campuses are absurd, it at least shows that some "little pinks" are fully aware and actively acting as the minions of totalitarianism.

Compared with the high-profile arrogance of these "patriotic" students, students who want to express their dissent can only try to keep a low profile and anonymity. Even if they hear passers-by discussing the posters, it is difficult for them to come forward and have a dialogue. Ideas, opportunities to build empathy. The need for strict anonymity will also limit the development of these progressive communities - it is difficult for online free discussions to be transformed into offline common actions, and it is difficult for offline activities to form a circle-breaking influence through publicity.

Multinational public actors face challenges from all directions. We are worried that our discourse of resistance will be used by Western conservatives to encourage discrimination and exclusion of Chinese people; we are also worried that progressives will despise the oppression of totalitarianism against us because they are afraid of racism and Sinophobia. We are worried that Chinese-speaking communities such as Hong Kong and Taiwan have difficulty understanding the censorship we are subjected to, simply equating our fears with cowardice and conservatism; Relatives and friends are estranged, torn apart, and left unresolved wounds.

However, in such times, why do we presume that this road will not be difficult? Compared to the pan-liberal and silent majority at home, our freedom and agency is a great privilege. Even looking at Chinese society, we are full of the "original sins" of those with vested interests, no matter in terms of nationality, class or age of growth. When the more disadvantaged and marginalized groups bear the price of not resisting or resisting, we have long been ashamed of ourselves. .

Our fears and guilt are real, but how to channel fear and guilt outwards toward empathy for others and the drive to act, rather than inwardly toward self-contempt, self-exile, avoidance, and cynicism, is Homework for each of us. Getting rid of the taming and poisoning of totalitarianism is inherently a road to self-redemption.

I think today I saw my place

The slogan-posting campaign that is in full swing overseas has turned into a more secretive "toilet revolution" in China. Protest slogans are written in public toilets that are not monitored. With the convening of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the authorities tried their best to prevent the impact of the Sitong Bridge incident. Regardless of the "convention" of mass bombing due to spreading and talking about this matter, two people in my WeChat contacts were "drinked tea" by the police. One of them was identified after participating in a telegram group discussion about the Sitongqiao incident. Four police officers descended from the sky and took him away in front of his parents for two hours of interrogation. His mobile phone was read, all the "anti-thief" groups he participated in were recorded, the overseas software was deleted, and he was able to go home after writing a letter of guarantee. The police explicitly asked him what he thought of Peng Lifa, the suspected initiator of the Sitongqiao slogan: "Do you think he did the right thing?" He could only answer: "No." Another person was too panicked to answer me after being harassed by the police. "I love the party, the country and the people" over and over again, "I will not send any inappropriate text again."

For a long time, the people have survived under such meticulous and pervasive censorship and control, and even their own words and wills have been violently colonized. What kind of unspeakable madness and absurdity is this?

Perhaps it is precisely because of the cruelty of reality that some comments "splash cold water" on the Sitong Bridge protest, and are pessimistic and hopeless about the role it can play in China. Author Utashima Politician and Luma 's article both argue that the crux of the matter is that China does not have a civil society. After years of crackdowns and divisions by the authorities, China's civil society has become a mess. Individuals have been atomized and cannot be assembled into large-scale resistance movements. Only these scattered and sporadic protests can emerge. For the same reason, this kind of personal struggle has not received more response and support from more people. The Sitong Bridge Warrior is destined to be only a "lone warrior".

“This sense of isolation is the root cause of individuals feeling hopeless and unable to see an exit. They also become lukewarm to their fellow citizens who are fighting one after another, because there are so many things like this, it is a little bit insensitive.” (—— "Stone Links" The Cry of the Bridge | It's not the resistance that's abnormal, it's ourselves" )

Of course we have to be careful whether we turn our anxiety and despair over the status quo into romantic imaginations about revolution; calling a revolution by "rendering" a hero and an action with great colors simplifies people's understanding of the complexity of reality and social change difficulty of understanding. However, the reality is of course an endless loop with no exit in sight, but the Sitong Bridge protest has stirred up this backwater and opened up a little bit of our hope for the future. This kind of "hope" is not based on thinking that he can change all this - I don't think Peng Lifa is naive enough to think that his plan of "strike, strike and remove Xi Jinping" will really come true, but he still does it with a mortal heart . He just wants to use the extreme way of sacrificing himself to wake up the people.

Therefore, the point is not why he has fallen to the point of rebelling alone, and the society in disarray cannot catch him; the point is whether the society and the weakened people, who are already in disarray, might be awakened, cheered and roused by his desperate breakthrough. Struggling to create more variables for your bound destiny.

"Hope" comes from seeing the resistance itself - if despair comes from our inability to see each other. To borrow a sentence from Zhang Jieping: "All ruling techniques are based on this, and the seeds that shake everything are also buried here."

He has done everything he can to show us, and we must stop turning a blind eye.

In China, the Sitong Bridge protest may be buried deep in people's memory like many previous public events, like a seed waiting for the day of recovery in the long darkness. But overseas, the political awakening of the younger generation and broad community connections have caught and carried forward the little hope I saw in Peng Lifa. These young people are the real fruits of China's reform and opening up. They are free from material scarcity, they have seen a diverse world, they know how to empathize with the weak, they are reluctant to give up love and freedom, and they are passionate about social justice. This fresh hope is like the first breath of air for someone who has been suffocated for a long time.

I remember in a conversation after the Fengxian Chain Women Incident, I told feminist activist Lv Pin that for the past two years, I have been feeling that things are going away. After the Iron Chain Girl, I felt that as a rational public participant, there was not much I could do. In fact, the window period for civil society building, institutional building, and peaceful promotion of political transformation has long since passed. The domestic liberal community has been crushed and ideology has declined. It is not easy for the feminist movement to continue to this day. I believe that Enlightenment-based reforms are the friendliest approach to people, but when power does everything wrong, empathizing with the suffering of ordinary people builds up an overwhelming sense of urgency that even makes me feel that my reason is no longer justified. So I kinda can't find my place. Lu Pin said that she was already mentally prepared to fail in the games. It is now to see whether the tragic individual tragedy can still awaken the people. She also said that settling our lives and maintaining our community is what we can do and the foundation of sustainable struggle.

I think today I saw my place. We still haven't given up on the imagination of civil society, even if we can only hope for the seeds that remain overseas.

Fear, once overcome, turns into self-empowerment

My friends and I's poster-up operation lasted from dusk to night. On the way out, we found a blank bulletin board on the side of the road, and decided to put a row of slogans on it.

Maybe it was smooth before, she was more relaxed at this time. We stick to it methodically, not noticing when someone is standing behind and watching silently.

The man watched for a while, and finally couldn't help but came up to chat up, saying that he was an Iranian student and was organizing protests by Iranians recently. "We are in a similar situation to yours, and we should connect with each other," he said.

After saying goodbye to him, his friend said he was "frightened to death" when he saw someone standing behind him watching.

Later, the Iranian student invited us to participate in the weekend Iranian protest rally in the city center. I specially made several posters to juxtapose the content of the protests in China and Iran, emphasizing the transnational and interracial unity on the road of resisting totalitarianism. .

That day, my friend called her friend again, so at the assembly site, I met three other Chinese students who share common values. We marched and shouted slogans with the large Iranian troops, and at one point we reached the front of the line. During the process, many Iranians came to thank us. When the Iranian students came to the stage to speak, they specifically mentioned the incident in China and thanked the "Chinese friends" for their support.

This is the first time I have found my own "community" in Winnipeg, a city I call "exile" - young people who are politically awake and willing to participate in politics, even if there are only five , I also feel no longer alone. They all just came out of the domestic "run". After everyone checked their eyes, they became familiar with each other as if they had found an organized underground party.

What is even more gratifying is that my friend who was very scared when we went to put up posters together became very active. She not only helped me make placards with cardboard, but also took the initiative to contact and maintain communication with Iranian students, and put photos of us participating in the assembly, The poster was submitted to Citizen Daily.

Sure enough, in the practice of public participation, once this fear is overcome and overcome, it will be transformed into self-empowerment.

I thought of what friends in the community said : "Courage is acquired in practice, and trust is also grown in connection and joint action."